The Garden of Evil gallery

I deliberately decided to focus the entire story of The Garden of Evil in a very small area, part of Rome north of the Pantheon which, in Caravaggio’s time was known as ‘Ortaccio’, an area of rough bars, brothels, and home to many criminals and artists too, the painter included. This gives you a flavour of a part of the city which is still wonderfully chaotic and a little run-down in places today. You can also see some of the talking statues featured in the book, which were used to communicate messages during the censored times of the Popes. To find out more about them go here.

The hidden city: underground Rome

Some questions never go away. One I get constantly is, ‘Why did you choose to set your books in Rome?’ The honest answer is I didn’t; Rome chose me, clubbing me over the head one day when I happened to be there editing a book about somewhere else entirely. I’ve now completed seven Costa novels, and still have two more to go under my present contract… and hopefully lots after that.

Another world beneath the streets of Rome

A superb mix of history, mystery and humanity. Booklist

This is definitely among this spring’s must-read crime fictions. Calgary Herald

If you are one of those individuals who believe there are very few writers left who can make you sit up and applaud, be forewarned. You’ll be putting your hands together in appreciation of David Hewson! Bob Walch, I Love A Mystery

David Hewson has a superb sense of pace and place, his characters feel real, and he writes a page-turner detective story like no other. Choice

…a sophisticated and original thriller that cements David Hewson’s burgeoning reputation as one of crime writing’s most exciting talents. Mystery and Thriller Magazine

It begins on one of Rome’s least-known hills, the Aventino, in the public piazza fronting the mansion of the Knights of Malta. There a curious keyhole to the knights’ estate reveals an astonishing view, a direct line across the Tiber to the dome of St. Peters in the distance.

For seven-year-old Alessio Bramante the act of peeking through the keyhole on his way to school each day is a ritual, a way of establishing a bond with his difficult, distant father, one of Rome’s most famous archaeologists, Giorgio Bramante. Then one day, after an unexpected visit to one of Giorgio’s underground excavations, Alessio disappears. A group of students who had slipped into the site, an ancient Mithraic temple, attract the blame. A tragedy occurs. Alessio is never found, and it’s his father who goes to jail.

Fourteen years later, in an arcane shrine by the Tiber known as the Little Museum of Purgatory, a tee-shirt belonging to Bramante’s son begins to show fresh bloodstains. No one can understand how the marks have appeared behind the glass.

Soon it becomes apparent that the newly-released Giorgio Bramante is bent upon a vicious and terrifying revenge on all those he blames for the loss of his son, and numbers Inspector Leo Falcone, a member of the original investigating team, among his targets. In the depths of the labyrinth he knows better than any man, a distraught father seeks his vengeance against those he hates.

Nic Costa, watching Falcone move relentlessly into the man’s deadly grip, realises the answer to the deadly present must lie in solving a cold case that, like the forgotten Alessio Bramante, has long been regarded as dead and buried for good.

Caravaggio revisited: The Garden of Evil

The picture contained a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that, once witnessed, could never be unseen… No one could take their eyes off the painting. Even the presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead in strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas at that moment…

In a hidden studio in an ancient area of Rome where the Vatican liked to keep an eye on the city’s prostitutes, an art expert from the Louvre is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings that Nic Costa has ever seen – an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece.

But before long tragedy will strike far closer to home. The main suspect’s identity is known, but he remains untouchable – protected in his grand palazzo by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists.

If Costa and his team can crack the reasons for the cult’s existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing the murderer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons the artist had to flee Rome and a sentence of death four centuries before….

Available in the UK from Pan Macmillan now and in the US from Bantam Dell in July 2008.

The church that Michelangelo built

Here’s a place I’ve never used in a book. I still can’t help drifting back there whenever I’m in Rome though.
Santa Maria degli Angeli (e dei Martiri, if we’re to give the place its full title) is nothing to look at from the outside, just a few hundred metres from the bustle of Termini station. [...]

Reviews of The Seventh Sacrament

Booklist, the Americal Library Association’s influential magazine, says of The Seventh Sacrament…

Hewson’s uncompromising trio of antiestablishment Roman cops—Nic Costa, Gianni Peroni, and their boss, Leo Falcone—are back in the Eternal City and up to their necks in another vat of hot water. As with the previous four entries in this always-captivating series, the crime on the front burner—a dead body discovered in a Roman church—is merely the entrée point to a case with tentacles extending deep into ancient history…Hewson keeps his readers securely tethered to a narrative lifeline; like Theseus on the trail of the minotaur, we follow the plot around countless blind corners but never lose our way out of the maze. The interplay between Hewson’s three cops—and between them and the especially rich supporting cast—lift this novel far above the plot-driven Da Vinci Code and its many imitators. A superb mix of history, mystery, and humanity.

Caravaggio’s final resting place

He’s generally hailed as one of the finest Italian artists of all time. So where do you think Caravaggio is buried? In a great cathedral, like so many of his peers? Or the Pantheon, like Raphael?
Oddly enough, we simply don’t know. Caravaggio died penniless trying to make his way back to Rome where he was [...]

Sunday Times makes Chopin audio book of the week

The UK’s Sunday Times is one of the first newspapers to review The Chopin Manuscript, declaring it ‘fabulous fun’.
Nice to see a British newspaper get in first! Here’s the review in which the work occupies the audio book of the week slot…..
This unusual thriller is composed by a series of bestselling authors who each [...]

Some new places to eat and drink in Rome

My last trip saw me staying in a different area, between the Colosseum and San Giovanni. Quiet, a little sparse on the cafe and restaurant front, rather too near some of the tourist tat of the Colosseum… but as always not without promise.
One much overlooked area in Rome is Monti, which lies behind the Via [...]

Inside the presidential palace

This is the front door to one of the most famous residential palaces in Rome. The Palazzo del Quirinale sits on top of the high hill overlooking the forum and Piazza Venezia. It is the official residence of the President of Italy. Most tourists are confined to the wonderful view of the city from the [...]